This is the official announcement for the DC Metro regional site of the Yale's BHSAT, a high school academic quizbowl tournament to be hosted by the quizbowl team of St. Anselm’s Abbey School on Saturday, April 14, 2012. This tournament is open to any high school team that wishes to attend.

This tournament will take place at St. Anselm’s Abbey School in northeast Washington, DC. The exact address is 4501 South Dakota Avenue NE, Washington, DC, 20017.

PARKING: Parking is available in either of the two lots on school grounds.

TIMES: Registration will run from 8:15 to 8:45. An opening meeting will then follow, with the goal of starting Round 1 as soon as possible after 8:45. Teams arriving after 8:45 run the risk of forfeiting their first game.

QUESTIONS: The questions will come from BHSAT, a tournament written by the quizbowl team of Yale University. More information about this set is available here: viewtopic.php?f=109&t=12522.

The questions will follow a modified ACF format; that is, games of 20 tossups with 30-point bonuses, untimed. The questions will be distributed for free in electronic format after all sites have been completed. Sample packets from last year's incarnation can be found here: http://www.quizbowlpackets.com/archive/2011BHSAT/.

FORMAT: The field is capped at 16 teams due to staffing limitations. Unless we are promised an extraordinary number of outside moderators, that cap cannot be expanded.

A format will be devised when we have a clearer picture of how many staffers and teams will be in attendance. All teams will be offered a minimum of 9 games in any format, should they desire to play them. Trophies will be awarded to the top three teams, and book prizes will be awarded to the top eight individual scorers.

REGISTRATION AND FEES:

-The fee structure is as follows:

Base fee: $70 per team. Due to the small field size, we are temporarily limiting schools to two teams each for this event. If you are interested in bringing more than two teams, please indicate as such in your registration, and we will add them to a wait-list and allow them into the field later on if there is enough space.

Buzzer discount: $5 off school's total fee for each fully functional system (i.e., control box and eight activators all work). We encourage schools to bring as many sets as possible.

Staffer discount: $10 off school's total fee. This could be a coach or student who is not playing. Volunteer staffers must stay through all the games (except finals) in order to receive credit for their school.

Travel discount: For teams travelling to the tournament from out-of-town, we will be happy to work out travel discounts on a case-by-case basis.

-To register, e-mail Aidan Mehigan at prof.whoopie@gmail.com (preferably with something about “quizbowl” and/or “tournament” in the subject line) with the number of teams, buzzers, and staffers you want to bring, and an email address where you can be contacted with details. We also ask that all teams provide a cell phone number by which they can be contacted on the day of the tournament in the case of emergencies. You should receive prompt confirmation of your registration. Feel free to share this announcement with any schools you think would be interested in attending. There is no further registration form or other action needed on your part in order to be officially registered; you only need to e-mail Aidan at that address with the information requested.

METHOD OF PAYMENT: All teams must pay by the day of the tournament. We prefer to accept payment in person right before the tournament starts, but we will accept checks by mail ahead of time if your procedures require it. We can accept cash, personal checks, or checks from school, school district, or quizbowl club funds. We have no ability to process purchase orders, credit cards, Paypal, or any other forms of payment; please do not bring them to the tournament expecting them to be accepted.

Unless special arrangements are made with the tournament director beforehand, any team that has not paid by the day of the tournament will be charged a $25 late fee and will have two weeks to pay in full before we start mailing letters to their school administration about it.

Please make checks payable to “St. Anselm’s Abbey School,” with “Quizbowl” on the memo line. If you require a pre-tournament invoice in order to have a check cut, let us know as soon as possible so that we can send you the paperwork in time.

TEAM & ROSTER SIZE: There may be a maximum of six players on one team's roster, up to four of whom may play at one time. There will be no exceptions to this rule. If you bring more than six players, you must register a second team to have all of them play. There will be a halftime substitution opportunity in each game. Each player may appear on only one team's roster throughout the day - no switching from the B team to the A team, etc. Teams may also play shorthanded if necessary.

FOOD: Neither breakfast nor lunch will be provided at this tournament. Directions to local eateries will be supplied. Due to a dearth of walking-distance food options, we will also be offering teams the opportunity to order pizza for lunch.

Please e-mail me if you have any further questions. We’re looking forward to seeing a wide variety of teams from DC and surrounding states on April 14.

Aidan MehiganSt. Anselm's Abbey School '12Columbia University '16 | University of Oxford '17

With about a week to go, only two spots remain in the field, and several DC-area regulars aren't yet registered. If you want to play this tournament, please email me as soon as possible, especially if your team can provide a staffer.

Aidan MehiganSt. Anselm's Abbey School '12Columbia University '16 | University of Oxford '17

We'll have thirteen packets, so I'm thinking two brackets of eight, then cross over top three and next three, with the bottom four playing a round-robin. That's ten rounds, which leaves two packets for a final and one for tiebreakers and emergencies.

Aidan MehiganSt. Anselm's Abbey School '12Columbia University '16 | University of Oxford '17

Congratulations to Blair A, who won the second game of an advantaged final against Monticello Concerto A to win this tournament. GDS A took third. Combined stats are here. Any wonkiness is probably a product of Gonzaga dropping out of this tournament on Thursday, leading to uneven brackets, or Quince Orchard leaving at lunch (before prelims were over! without telling anyone!), messing up consolations. Many thanks to the outside staffers who made this event possible; we couldn't have done it without you. Or, as Chris Ray pointed out, we could have done it, and it would probably been some combination of amusing and terrible. In any case, thanks.

Set criticism should be directed to Matt Jackson. Let me know about any stats issues.

Aidan MehiganSt. Anselm's Abbey School '12Columbia University '16 | University of Oxford '17

This was a well-run tournament. Any time that CR can be home from a competition after 10 games at just barely after 6pm, that's pretty awesome, considering we always have the longest drive of anybody. That's because of good moderators, a small field, and a bunch of good teams getting lots of questions right.

Lots of really impressive teams here. I was particularly impressed by Blair B, who just really knows stuff, and annihilated some tossups incredibly early for a B team. BCC is also a really good team, especially for one that does not go to a lot of stuff. Keep going and improving, you've got a ton of potential. I can say the same for George Mason, whose best player is a junior and will be something special next year.

The set was good, written pretty well. The bonuses i liked a lot, and certainly had very challenging hard parts. That's fine, even if a bunch of them were just flat-out way too hard. At least the easy parts were clearly easy, and middle parts were accessible.

The tossups, once again from a housewritten or college-written set, were just a little too hard. When you have to toss up authors who literally did one notable thing ever, and even then it's not that notable, you're just doing it wrong. The questions were written well enough that this wasn't a severe problem always, and the field was good enough that in most games we were still getting 18 tossups right, but for a couple teams here (and there were zero "bad teams" at this tournament) a good amount of tossups were just not accessible. I feel that the 2012 version of this set was just more difficult than the 2011 version.

There are errors in the stats: in the GDSA/George Mason game, 22 tossups are marked as answered. In the GDSB/TJB game, 21 tossups are marked as answered. Also, i would like to see the games entered with rounds and round report activated to see if there's any variation from one round to the next; i think a couple packets were more challenging than others.

On a final note, sorry to hijack this thread, but please, teams, come to CR's tournament next weekend in Delaware running on HSAPQ set #23. It's a small field with great teams and new teams, and all are welcome to enjoy a good day of quizbowl. Details here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=12658 Thanks.

Hello from Quince Orchard High School. I think we owe the entire field an apology for the circumstances surround our team's lunch disappearance. I (the coach) was not at the event, but am relaying the story from our team.

The boys left to go get lunch and while there, realized they had lost the keys to the car they'd taken there. They'd spent their allotted lunch time at McDonalds and when it was time to leave to come back, there were no keys. They spent the next 30-45 minutes looking for the keys on the ground outside, under the car, all over McDonalds, even digging through the McDonald's trash bin. Unfortunately no keys were found and the owner of the car had to call his parents. An hour later they arrived, opened the car and then angrily brought the team home with them...which the kids thought was fine since it'd been like 2.5 hours since they left St. Anselm's.

I and the team are very sorry that happened and that it likely screwed up the remainder of the day's scheduling. I hope everyone will understand that, while a nuisance, it was not QO just "leaving without telling anyone" and blowing off the tournament, as it may have seemed. They never intended to leave.

That's certainly an understandable predicament. I simply wish someone had called me to let me know. All teams should have had my cell number. This is also a good illustration of why all teams need to send the TD a contact number. Several teams fail to do so every tournament, and this situation is what can happen as a result.

A number of stats errors have been pointed out. These will be corrected either tonight or tomorrow after I get home from New York.

Aidan MehiganSt. Anselm's Abbey School '12Columbia University '16 | University of Oxford '17